Wednesday, April 1, 2015

Epic Blog Battles of Gaming: FFXIV vs. WoW

Last week I hit max level in an MMO other than WoW for the first time. My Paladin in FFXIV is now ready for post-leveling content, and I've being doing some of that when I'm not busy making my own video game.

All my pretty paladin gear <3

It's not that I haven't played other MMOs, it's just except for WoW, none of them ever held my attention that long. I've played The Realm Online, Everquest, Ultima Online, Asheron's Call, Final Fantasy XI, Ragnarok Online, EVE Online, City of Heroes, WoW, Guild Wars, RF Online, LOTRO, Star Trek Online, TERA, RIFT, Guild Wars 2, Wildstar, and FFXIV. That's a lot of MMOs.I'm hoping to get into organized raiding in FFXIV soon, so I can compare it to my experiences in WoW. The Free Company I'm in, Greysky Armada, is pretty active. I got roped in by The Bel Effect, of course, like many others, but I've stayed because the game has an immense amount of content that's quite polished. And the subscriber base is nothing to sneeze about, measuring at roughly half a million outside China by any searches I try. When compared to the behemoth that is WoW, 500k isn't very much, but compared to pretty well every other MMO? Easily in profitable territory.So how do the games stack up? They're both Themepark MMOs, with your standard action bars, classes, real-time cooldown-based combat, small and large group-based content, and an expansive world. When your mechanics aren't terribly unique due to genre, what you have left to differentiate is the aesthetics of the game. Things like graphics, story, sound, and so on. So here's a few comparisons.Graphics/VisualsFFXIV has the benefit of a much newer engine compared to WoW. A friend of mine once commented that WoW's graphics looked like mud, and while I still disagree with him, FFXIV's graphics certainly shine in comparison. They're much sharper, a lot more details overall, and more vibrant. While WoW's stylized graphics have allowed it to stand the test of time a lot better than other games that go for semi-realistic, I have to admit, FFXIV's are pretty damn good.

WoW on the left, FFXIV on the right. Not quite a fair comparison: Shadowmoon Valley on the left is perpetually night, but you can see the sheer lack of polygons in WoW's graphics.

Granted, WoW's graphics allow it to run on machines much less beefy than are require for FFXIV, which probably helps WoW's popularity long term, but for me, eh, I'm a cutting edge kinda gamer, so I don't mind cranking my graphics settings to max.However, the interesting thing here is that in content such as dungeons, I'd actually say WoW has the better visuals. I'll touch on this later, but many of FFXIV's dungeons are pretty boring visually. Perhaps it allows them to shove content out faster, but compared to the details you see in WoW's dungeons, it's just not as interesting.

WoW on the left, FFXIV on the right.

That's not to say they aren't pretty, but WoW's dungeons have a vibrant story being told in all the little details, like scrolls strewn about in a library, or cargo in a train depot. FFXIV's dungeons feel like corridors with a few repeated doodads here or there. So while the graphics engine makes FFXIV's graphics "prettier" and sharper, WoW wins hand's down in terms of feel.That being said, the spell effects? FFXIV wins, absolutely beautiful.MusicI'm not a huge fan of the whole "ambient" thing Western RPGs seem to have going. I prefer my music to have strong musical themes and an actual melody. Warlords of Draenor brings some of that, and it truly has some great music, but FFXIV's music is fantastic. I'll admit to being totally biased in favour of the JRPG style of music, and FFXIV does not disappoint.

One thing that FFXIV does so well that WoW does not is music based on context. When in combat, you get different music. When in a dungeon, you have different music for the zone, vs. battles, vs. the bosses. Major bosses throughout the game even get their own themes, whereas WoW you only get music for the zone as far as I've ever been able to tell. Some of the zone music is quite good, but the variation and context I get with FFXIV's means I don't just turn it off in favour of my own music.Not only that, but again music provides context. In a video later I'll show off myself doing Titan Hard Mode, and you'll notice the music changes depending on what phase of the fight you're in. During the DPS race to kill his heart in the middle of the battle, the music changes to something more harried, frantic, before going back to the heavy guitar of the rest of the fight if you succeed. It's an amazing touch.Seriously, the music in FFXIV overall is just better in my opinion.StoryInterestingly, FFXIV ties a lot of content to the main story. You unlock things like dungeons, airships, mounts, and so on through the main story. Anytime you're not sure about when a specific mechanic will become available? Just keep going through the story.And what a story. Very Final Fantasy in nature, with crystals, big summoned bads, some politics, and an evil empire. I've completed the initial main story up to level 50 and it was really quite good with a satisfying ending. However, that's apparently only about half the content available story-line wise.One of the big things that differentiates WoW and FFXIV is who is the main character of the story. In FFXIV, it's unequivocally you. You're the star, the hero. In WoW, it's mostly about the NPCs and you're just there to clean up messes (friggin' kill-stealer Thrall, most of all). Heck, early kills that players made like Onyxia got ret-conned to be prominent NPCs. You're not important, you're just another pawn in the grand scheme. FFXIV, however, you're the lynchpin of most heroic deeds.That's not to say there aren't memorable NPCs in FFXIV. There are quite a few, from the heads of state to the members of your merry band of heroes. Also, the name Hildebrand will conjure up both eyerolls and giggles from the FFXIV player populace.There's also a number of cutscenes (oh man, are there ever a lot of cutscenes!), both in dungeons and in questing. A lot of showing, some telling, and a lot of cases where both are occurring. But there's rarely any plain old quest text that isn't explained in either a discussion with the NPC directly, or via cutscene. The quest text is supplemental to that to remind you of what you discussed, but you can get away with not reading it at all because all the information was handed to you already otherwise. A much more engaging way of questing than WoW's method of throwing a wall of text at you.Honestly, I think WoW's story has a lot more potential than FFXIV's right now. There's so much more world in World of Warcraft. However, Blizzard's largely squandered it, because they don't really care. I cannot for the life of me find the quote, but it's been said by Blizzard that they're not Bioware, that story isn't the focus of their game. And that's okay, but if you want story, FFXIV right now is the stronger bet in my mind.And More...There's so much more to talk about--like the community and the tools that FFXIV uses to enforce/encourage better community interactions; or the content and how it rises in a pretty smooth difficulty curve; or how some of the end-game content compares to WoW's; or how FFXIV has more content each patch than WoW does, and patches come faster; or how gathering/crafting differs significantly from WoW; or just the sheer amount of content in general. So on and so forth.The basics between the two games are pretty well equal: we are talking your bog-standard MMORPG. But so far it feels FFXIV is out-Blizzarding Blizzard in terms of polish and evolving the genre. And that's a good thing! Perhaps FFXIV will start eating WoW's lunch and Blizzard will light a fire under their butts. There's definitely more blog posts coming on my experiences, but here's a video of me in Titan (Hard Mode) to give you an idea of how some of the end-game content looks. #WoW, #FFXIV

Yeah, I'm working on the story :D The early dungeons definitely feel thrown together by a small team. Winding tunnels, not much differentiating each area from the last. Basically all variations on Deadmines, except Deadmines still had more personality as a dungeon than many of FFXIV's early dungeons.

Remind me next time you're online and I'll help you install an image editor with proper resizing and compression options. That's a whopper of a 2MB image right at the top of your blog post. :)

I think there are some places both games could improve. FFXIV's early leveling experience is overshadowed by extraordinarily boring abilities (especially gladiator, ugh) and the 2.5-second global cooldown, which turns off a lot of people. Its voice acting is also terrifically bad in places, and there's not much in the way of character ability customization.

WoW, on the other hand, seems to have lost its stride in creating "fun" end-game content that isn't Raid Finder (where your contributions to the group are overshadowed by at least one of the other 24 people). There's also a relentless focus on gameplay to the detriment of music, storyline, and even content -- one look at any set of Blizzard patch notes shows that 80% of them, by volume, are minute changes to class mechanics. I'd argue that their biggest weakness, though, is not having a real vision for the game and reacting too much to community feedback. Time after time, Blizzard wields the buff and nerf bats with a very heavy hand, and restricts options to funnel players into their preferred Content Du Jour instead of offering multiple ways to get things done. (Case in point: daily quests between Cata->MoP->WoD.)

That said, I agree with this post overall -- I'm enjoying my time in FFXIV a lot more than I had in WoW, and so far it seems to be keeping my attention pretty well. Let's hope that continues into the expansion!

Agreed on the early leveling experience for Gladiator at least. The 2.5s GCD I rather enjoy, actually. It did take a bit to get used to after WoW's 1s GCD for Melee/Casters w/ Haste, and I find cast times to be not quite long enough to interrupt readily with a GCD that long, but I like that I have time to dodge stuff, think about my next move, etc.

Agreed with WoW's team focus. Definitely gameplay first, which is fine, but I agree they've taken it to the point of absurdity at the expense of other elements. Still, their gameplay is top notch, from raid bosses to dungeon design, to how customizing your class works, WoW still beats out FFXIV imho. But unfortunately for WoW, there's so much more to games than just sheer gameplay.

I also like the 2.5s GCD, now -- but at the beginning of the game, it made things feel intolerably slow, given that you only have two buttons to press anyway. I'd also appreciate slightly longer cast times for some things, though perhaps that's Square telling us to roll warriors. :)

Agreed; WoW does gameplay right, most of the time. Still, I'm hoping to see more diversity in fight mechanics from XIV as I get through the content -- the latest trial they added was, gratifyingly, not a single monster in a circular arena -- but I'd also like some meaningful options for customization. As it is, everyone takes the same cross-class skills and uses (mostly) the same points distribution, so you either do it "right" or "wrong".

The latter, and that's by their own choice/admission. They spend a lot more time on mechanics than they do quests/story/features around sound/music. They're slowly upgrading their graphics, which is definitely good (and I don't begrudge them wanting to have the game run on all sorts of hardware--in fact, probably a big reason their still #1), and their artists/musicians are top notch with the tools they have.

And maybe that's the rub. They have an old infrastructure. Maybe the amount of work it takes to implement a quest in WoW is significantly higher than it is in FFXIV.

Gotcha. I've see a lot of people complain about how WoW not having Fire Elementals immune to Fire is ruining the lore for the sake of gameplay and didn't know if you had similar complaints ;) I know you don't seem hung up on the elemental stuff but there might have been others ("OMG MALE NIGHT ELF PRIESTS? THIS IS AN OUTRAGE!").

I doubt the quest work is that much harder...I suspect part of it is that each quest is really only done once "fresh" and then in repeated times for other characters people care a lot less about it. But the basic gameplay is repeated constantly and raids/dungeons are meant to be done several times in most cases.

My issue with Final Fantasy XIV's graphics (and most Asian-style MMOs) is the over-reliance on background. Often the settings are rather linear or limited, but there's a lot of additional backdrop to make things feel bigger, fuller, or part of a greater whole. I have issues buying into this illusion: it feels like a wall of mirrors so everything feels more open.

I get what you're saying, and at the same time I don't care as much. I'd rather have an excellent curated yet narrow experience than a super open world which is mediocre in nature because development resources were spread too thin. But admittedly, that's personal preference.

For the record, I had 0 problems with FFXIII's linearity. Also noting that people complaining about FFXIII's linearity also rarely remembered that FFX was also nearly entirely as linear. But I digress.

It's a MMORPG. I'd rather have a world than a hallway with a pretty backdrop.

JRPGs are a different beast altogether. I don't mind their more linear nature, especially since they tend be so heavily curated anyway. And no, I never forgot how linear FFX was or that FFXII was very open and sucked.

Honestly, they can't do Open World because of hardware limitations. They may be able to convert a lot of it into open world eventually though once they drop the PS3. FFXV is said to be open world so they are capable.

Define "open world elements" Murf. WoW relied heavily on backgrounds until they added flying to the whole world. Everquest and Ultima Online had pretty restrictive zones as well. Heck, so does SWTOR and Wildstar. There are edges to zones, with backdrops.

Admittedly, FFXIV's zones do tend towards smaller than others, and perhaps that's the rub, but I'm honestly at a loss as to what differentiates FFXIV negatively compared to other themepark MMOs with respect to "open world elements" aside from WoW's ability to fly everywhere.

Good King Moggle Mog XII is the best battle music of the game IMO. It start decent while you're fighting the minions, then he shows up and it just gets hilarious -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiB0-PFXv6U

I agree in part. Generally speaking the FFXIV effects are much flashier and better looking than WoW's, the problem is I think at times they go overboard with it. In FFXIV even mundane skills look like the 4th of July. Play a Thief/Ninja and you'll experience a world of swirling light only comparable to spinning around in circles at a laser show.

But that is pretty common for MMOs from the other side of the Pacific; gorgeous graphics, flashy spells, picturesque landscapes. Yet the worlds often feel like a dollhouse, they're just too perfect to be believed. I wish I could get an MMO that had FFXIV's art budget but WoW's approach to story-by-environment (which is not perfect, but as you pointed out is focused on much more).

I haven't played Ninja yet, and I haven't done a 24-person raid yet, so we'll see if my opinion on flashy spell-effects stays. Maybe if I could find a way to prioritize them. ie: As a healer, I want to see tank effects so I can tell when they pop a cooldown (not just the buff icon), as a Tank I want to see DPS AoEs so I can make sure I can drag the mobs in there. As a DPS, just me, all my effects please.

Yeah, I like how WoW approaches their environment better than FFXIV overall. I'm not sure I'd liken it to a dollhouse. They do dilapidated pretty well. It's just extremely obvious to see Doddad #1, and then go, that's just Doodad #1 rotated. That one is shrunk 50%. etc. And realize that there are maybe a total of 3 Doodads in the entire dungeon/cavern. Efficient, but once you see it you can't unsee it.

The dungeons were especially bad but it's the open world that felt "too" perfect. Like, it FEELS designed rather than something that might occur naturally. The repeated doodads cause that in the dungeons for me.

Also, one of my biggest requests back when I played was for a particle-effect priority system :( hope they get to that at some point.

Have you heard the music for Shiva yet? I would be really interested to know what you think to it, since opinion was so divided on it. Personally, I really like it, but then I like orchestral, classic and pop-rock, so it fit my taste. :D

FFXIV has actually topped 4 million registered players recently. The information you have about 500k was actually an error when a publication published Square's end of year report from an earlier year. The information spread around online, but the error was later corrected.